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Donald Clarke

Whingeing about cinema and real life since 2009

Red faces at Hogwarts.

In what must be regarded as a hugely embarrassing move, Warner Brothers has, with just a month to go before release, announced that the studio will not, as previously promised, be delivering Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I …

Donald Clarke

Donald

Sat, Oct 9, 2010, 17:36

In what must be regarded as a hugely embarrassing move, Warner Brothers has, with just a month to go before release, announced that the studio will not, as previously promised, be deliveringHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I in 3-D. The procedure was underway, but delays in processing the footage had become so extreme that the film-makers were forced to admit defeat. It is quite something when one of the year’s biggest films — alas, possibly the biggest — runs into this sort of hitch at this late a date. To add to the humiliation, we will now have a strange situation in which, all going well over the next six months, the second part of a bifurcated film will be released in 3-D, after its opening movement was released in just a flat version. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

Not in any way sad. Not. In. Any. Way.

Here’s where we grudgingly (very, very grudgingly) have to give the studio some degree of credit. Early this year, Warners handed 3-D haters some more ammunition when they released the largely awful Clash of the Titans in a retrofitted, bargain-basement version of the process. There seems little doubt that the boffins at Harry Potter could have pulled off that class of low-grade bumpiness, but they do seem to be exercising a degree of quality control here. If they can’t provide proper 3-D for their prestige pictures then they won’t provide any at all. That seems an honourable move.

Still, those horrible people who find 3-D a trial and Harry Potter a bore will be sniggering into their handkerchiefs tonight. They should be ashamed of themselves.